Poll Finds College Students Shunning Dot-Com Jobs NEW YORK
Internet-related business no longer is the most preferred industry for a job after college. The entertainment/media business is the most popular job sector, according to the latest Universum Undergraduate Survey of more than 6,000 undergraduate students at 56 universities across the United States.
The college students also said that consulting and accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP is the most ideal employer in the country. The firm got top honors from both all undergraduates and those majoring in business.
The Universum survey is independently conducted each year. Since 1999 it has ranked industries on their current appeal as a place to work after graduation and polled students on the five companies for which they would most like to work.
“Given what’s happened with the collapse of much Internet-related enterprise, it’s not a surprising finding that Internet work is no longer given top billing by college students,” says Claudia Tattanelli-Skeini, the CEO of Universum Communications Inc., a New York-based international research and management consulting company.
The survey found that most students now expect to stay a full three to five years with their first employer. Moreover, the number of students who plan to stay less than two years because they think of a first job as merely a quick stepping-stone has declined from 17 percent last year to 8 percent in 2002.
The survey also found that:
• Undergraduate students’ most commonly cited career goals include balancing personal and career interests and building a sound financial base.
• Working internationally is a top goal for 24 percent of undergraduate students and ranks as the sixth most chosen career goal overall.
• Students are more interested in inspecting their future workplace and report that internships play a critical part in influencing the image of a company.
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